Many objects useful in manufacturing in industries such as, for example, the automobile or the consumer electronics industry, need to be able to conduct heat away from a hot region in the object or to distribute heat evenly throughout the object. This is particularly important when at least part of the plastic object is near a heat source such as an engine block or a battery in a portable computer. Injection molding of plastics offers the potential for lower manufacturing cost and higher part-to-part uniformity so it a manufacturing process of interest to many industries. However, since most plastics have low thermal conductivity, even when conductive fillers are used, the use of plastic objects in certain applications can be limited.
Solid inkjet printheads are manufactured using stacked metal plates or stacks of plates and plastic layers. Such printheads are kept at about the phase change temperature of the solid ink that is used in the printheads with adhesively mounted resistive heaters. However, these printheads have some thermal uniformity challenges (thermal gradients)—especially for wide format (A3 paper) form factors.